Refuting the Favorite Nonsense of the Right-Wing

The Right-Wing has its own flavors of nonsense that
flourish within it. Like every group, they believe those claims that seem to
have the "ring of truth" to them, and it seems to be a universal human trait to
be insufficiently skeptical of claims that sound as if they 'ought to' be true.
That is mankind's eternal fallacy: confusing the "ought" with the "is". Francis
Bacon offered some excellent advice on that subject:

And generally let every student of nature take this as a rule:
that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to
be held in suspicion, and that so much the more care is to be taken dealing
with such questions to keep the understanding even and clear.

The New Organon, Aphorisms - Book One, LVIII

In other words, be especially suspicious of claims that you
strongly would like to be true. Of course, most peoples' mental process is
precisely the opposite: if I want it to be true, why, it scarcely needs any
proof at all - it is true! And there lies the pathway to error.

"HIV Doesn't Cause AIDS"

A group of so-called "skeptics", led by microbiologist Peter Duesberg of UC
Berkeley, are claiming that the HIV virus does not cause AIDS. Rather, they say,
the AIDS that is rampant in the gay community is caused mainly by their
widespread use of illegal drugs, which weaken the immune system. (Presumably
those monkeys and cats that die of immune suppression when infected with a viral
relative of the human-infecting HIV virus must also have led dissolute lives of
drug-induced stupor).

Zundel has long been selling blatantly pro-Nazi materials offering "inspiring
and nourishing food for the Aryan soul": tapes featuring "blackshirt and
brownshirt storm trooper songs and marches," or a book depicting Hitler as "a
trinity, as a man IN time, AGAINST time, and ABOVE time." He openly admits to
having used deceptive means to get on radio talk shows, such as claims about
'Nazi Flying Saucers,' to then talk about 'the myth of the six million.' The
"revisionists", like the feminists, are highly practiced in deception, and are
masters of the use of the half-truth, quarter-truth, and the irrelevant truth.

For example, one net.nazi wrote me, objecting to this page. He pretended to
reject Zundel as an extremist, just as feminists pretend to reject "extremist"
Andrea Dworkin while privately praising her highly and working with her on
achieving common goals. He suggested, however that other, more reasonable
"revisionists" had valid arguments. For example, "No large scale executions of
Jews occurred at Dachau, or, for that matter, anywhere in Germany." This is
perfectly true, and perfectly irrelevant. The Nazis set up their extermination
camps in occupied regions of Poland and the USSR to keep this ugly work as
little-known as possible. It is rare for any government to openly admit or
display its misdeeds. By routinely using disingenuous arguments such as this,
the "revisionists" demonstrate their intention not to educate or persuade, but
to bamboozle.

"Revisionists" insist that they are not antisemetic, and are
interested only in "the truth." You be the judge of that after seeing some of
the repulsive and offensive cartoons from a "revisionist" website by
Michael A. Hoffman II, critiquing "Holocaustianity." Hoffmann is one of the
leading "revisionists" active today, and is often depicted as 'credible'.

The Nizkor Project
is set up as a memorial to those who died in the Nazi Holocaust, and
debunks point-by-point neo-Nazi claims that the Nazis had no organized plan of
extermination for the Jews. Contains a vast archive of material on "revisionsm."

Many conservative Christians attempt to
reconcile their own pro-achievement philosophy with the New Testament's obvious
hostility to wealth. Unfortunately for them, the famous saying attributed to
Jesus about the Camel and the Needle's Eye
is not a reference to a supposed gate in Jerusalem, but means exactly
what it says.